What Happened to the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts?

How a Strip Club DJ's Death Marked the End of an Era in Atlanta Hip-Hop

Video

"Organized Noize’s Sleepy Brown had a successful career behind the scenes of some of Atlanta hip-hop’s finest moments throughout the ’90s. But as the decade came to a close, he knew that he wanted more. The result was the funk throwback The Vinyl Room. Out of step with the times, it was passed over by his major label and nearly forgotten. In 2016, RBMA provided Sleepy with a platform to revisit the album, both in conversation and in concert. In this interview with Christina Lee as part of RBMA Radio Live in Atlanta, Sleepy spoke about the album and its genesis one night before he performed it live in the city for the first time in more than a decade.” — Red Bull Music Academy

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"Big Boi doesn’t know who coined the ‘player and poet’ dichotomy that has been used to describe OutKast since its 1994 debut, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, when the duo became the first rap act signed to Babyface and L.A. Reid’s LaFace Records. But Big Boi has long opted out of that false binary — he helped found and nurture Atlanta’s modern hip-hop scene, and the Grammy-winning artist has written some of OutKast’s most enduring hooks. He also discovered two of the Dungeon Family collective’s most impactful second-generation descendants, Killer Mike and Janelle Monae. And as a solo artist, he remains one of Southern rap’s most joyful experimentalists, his work packed with funk signifiers and collaborators ranging from George Clinton to Kid Cudi." — interview and recording for Fireside Chat, exclusively on Red Bull Radio

"Xavier Dotson tends to describe himself first as a church pianist. He backed his choir-director mother when he was in grade school, and he has played piano at Georgia’s Life Abundantly Church for 12 years. Yet as Zaytoven, his wonky 808s and lively organs laid the foundation for modern trap music. Zaytoven landed on that sound when he was still living in his parents’ basement, recording with Gucci Mane, Nicki Minaj and Yo Gotti. The Grammy-winning producer is still at the center of what he helped create, and has nurtured and worked with next-generation trap architects Mike WiLL Made It and Metro Boomin.” — interview and recording for Fireside Chat, exclusively on Red Bull Radio

"Atlanta-based hip-hop writer Christina Lee said Future's chart success is mainstream music industry validation of the hip-hop tradition of releasing mixtapes, or full length albums released for free, often containing new material and uncleared samples. 'He also received these number ones because of streaming,' Lee said. 'It’s about a recognition of how he’s being played. The music industry is still shifting to recognize that really important music is being released in this way.'” — City Lights with Lois Reitzes on WABE

In 2018, Jason “Jah” Lee of Bossip approached me and Yoh Phillips of DJBooth to create a podcast. We record Sum’n to Say out the heart of SWATS (i.e. my kitchen table), to discuss, dissect and debate hip-hop culture in (relative) real time. In this episode, we revisit the pre-GoFundMe era where all the Tony Robbins of white needed is a Bentley, a kidney for his auntie and a black president. Hear more episodes at SoundCloud or Audiomack.